Reel Austin: The Film City

Austin talked its way into being a film capital without a studio lot or a mountain sign — it did it with a couple of stubborn directors, a beloved old theater, and a movie house built inside a former airport hangar. Richard Linklater shot "Slacker" and "Dazed and Confused" here and helped found the Austin Film Society; Robert Rodriguez set up Troublemaker Studios and made the "Spy Kids" films on the same grounds; the Alamo Drafthouse turned moviegoing into an Austin institution and exported it nationwide. This drive traces that story across town, from the Congress Avenue theaters where film first played in Austin to the studio campus on the old Mueller Airport, with a stop at the birthplace of the longest-running music program on television for good measure.